Organization Behaviour HW help

Chapter 8: Personality, Cultural Values, & Ability

Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Learning Objectives

• Define personality, cultural values, and ability. • Understand the “Big Five” dimensions of personality. • Review Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural values. • Describe the dimensions of cognitive ability. • Describe the dimensions of emotional ability. • Understand how ability and personality affect job

performance and organizational commitment.

Personality, Cultural Values, 
 and Ability

• “Individual differences” can tell us a lot. » Personality captures what people are like.

– It refers to the structures, propensities, and traits inside a person that explain his/her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.

» Ability captures what people can do. – It refers to the relatively stable capabilities people have.

» Cultural values captures where people are from (in a cultural sense).

– Shared beliefs about modes of conduct in a given culture.

Traits Associated with the Big Five Personality Dimensions

• Personality is a collection of multiple specific traits. !

• Traits are trends in people’s responses to their environment.

Conscientiousness

• Dependable, organized, reliable, ambitious, hardworking.

» Has the biggest positive influence on job performance.

» Prioritize accomplishment striving. – Conscientious employees have a strong desire to

accomplish task-related goals as a means of expressing personality.

Agreeableness

• Warm, kind, cooperative, helpful, courteous.

» Agreeable people focus on “getting along,” not necessarily “getting ahead.”

» Prioritize communion striving. – Have a strong desire to obtain acceptance in personal

relationships. – Beneficial in some positions but detrimental in others

➢Service jobs; Managerial positions

Neuroticism

• Nervous, moody, emotional, insecure, and jealous.

! » Associated with high negative affectivity

– dispositional tendency to experience unpleasant moods (e.g. hostility, nervousness, and annoyance).\

! » Is negatively related to job performance.

– Because neurotic people are more likely to appraise situations as stressful & believe they cannot cope.

Neuroticism

• Is related to locus of control (whether people attribute causes of events to themselves or the environment).

! » More neurotic people: external locus of control

(believe events are driven by luck, chance, or fate).

! » Less neurotic people: internal locus of control

(believe events are driven by their behavior).

Openness to Experience

• Curious, imaginative, creative, sophisticated. !

! » Valuable in jobs that:

–Are dynamic & changing –Require learning –Require high levels of creativity

➢the capacity to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions.

Extraversion

• Talkative, sociable, assertive, bold, dominant. !

» Easiest to judge when you first meet someone. ! » Prioritize status striving.

– Reflects a strong desire to obtain power and influence. !

» Associated with high positive affectivity – dispositional tendency to experience pleasant moods. !

» Extraverted people tend to be rated as more effective in leadership roles.

How does Personality Develop?

• Nature and Nurture

• Study of Identical Twins • Extraversion and Openness

may be genetic.

Longitudinal Study: Changes in Big Five Dimensions

Cultural Values

• Influence traits, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals.

! • Influence expression of traits. ! • Important to multinational companies.

» Differences in management styles, negotiation approaches, and reward preferences.

» Ethnocentrism is defined as a propensity to view one’s own cultural values as “right” and those of other cultures as “wrong.”

Hofstede’s Dimensions of 
 Cultural Values

• Found employees working in different countries prioritize different values.

! » Values clustered into distinct dimensions. !

– Individualism vs. Collectivism – Power Distance – Uncertainty Avoidance – Masculinity vs. Femininity – Short-Term vs. Long-Term Orientation

Hofstede’s Dimensions of 
 Cultural Values

Hofstede’s Dimensions of 
 Cultural Values

Ability

• Capabilities to perform certain activities. !

» Is relatively stable. ! » Is a function of genes and the environment. ! » Includes cognitive ability and emotional ability.

Cognitive Ability

• Capabilities related to the acquisition & application of knowledge. ! » Includes: !

– Verbal ability – Quantitative ability – Reasoning ability – Spatial ability – Perceptual ability

Verbal Ability

• Capabilities associated with understanding and expressing oral and written communication. ! » Oral comprehension - ability to understand spoken

words. » Written comprehension - ability to understand written

words. » Oral expression - ability to communicate ideas by

speaking. » Written expression - ability to communicate ideas in

writing.

Quantitative Ability

• Mathematical capabilities !

» Number facility - capability to do math operations.

! » Mathematical reasoning - the ability to

apply formulas to solve problems that involve numbers.

Reasoning Ability

• Capabilities associated with solving problems using insight and logic.

! » Problem sensitivity - ability to sense that there’s a

problem. ! » Deductive reasoning - use of rules to solve problems. ! » Inductive reasoning - ability to consider several specific

pieces of information and then reach a more general conclusion regarding how those pieces are related. !

» Originality - ability to develop novel ways to solve problems.

Spatial Ability

• Two types: !

» Spatial orientation - having an understanding of where one is relative to other things.

! » Visualization - ability to imagine how

things will look if they were put together.

Perceptual Ability

• Being able to understand & recall patterns of information.

! » Speed and flexibility of closure – picking out a

pattern of information quickly in the presence of distracting information.

! » Perceptual speed – examining and comparing

numbers, letters, and objects quickly.

Types and Facets of Cognitive

Ability

The “g-factor” 
 (General Cognitive Ability)

•Explains why people who are high on one ability also tend to be high on other abilities. •Underlies the specific cognitive abilities. •Accounts for the brain’s ability to process information

Emotional Ability

• Emotional intelligence – ability that affects social functioning.

! » Is defined in terms of four abilities:

! 1. Self-awareness – ability to understand &

express your own emotions. !

2. Other awareness (empathy) – ability to understand others’ emotions.

Emotional Ability

3. Emotion regulation – ability to recover quickly from emotional experiences. !

4. Use of emotions – ability to harness emotions & use them to improve the situation. !

• It is an important determinant of job performance for people with lower levels of cognitive intelligence.

Personality, Ability, & Performance & Commitment

• General cognitive ability & conscientiousness have the strongest influences on performance & commitment. ! » Cognitive ability: !

– Is not strongly related to organizational commitment. !

– Is a strong predictor of task performance. ! – Is a driver of maximum performance.

Effects of Cognitive Ability on Performance and Commitment

» Conscientiousness: ! – Has a moderate relationship with task

performance. ! – Is a driver of typical performance. ! – Influences engagement in more citizenship

behaviors & less counterproductive behaviors. ! – Increases organizational commitment.

Personality, Ability, & Performance & Commitment

Effects of Conscientiousness on Performance and Commitment

Takeaways

• Personality: propensities that explain a person’s patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

! • Cultural values: shared beliefs about conduct in a

given culture. ! • Ability: stable capabilities of people to perform a

range of related activities. ! • The “Big Five”: conscientiousness, agreeableness,

neuroticism, openness to experience, extraversion.

Takeaways

• Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural values: individualism–collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity–femininity, and short-term vs. long-term orientation.

! • Cognitive abilities: verbal, quantitative, reasoning,

spatial, and perceptual. ! • General cognitive ability, or g, underlies all of these

more specific cognitive abilities.

Takeaways

• Emotional intelligence includes: self-awareness, other awareness, emotion regulation, and use of emotions.

! • General cognitive ability has a strong positive

relationship with job performance and is not related to organizational commitment.

! • Conscientiousness has a moderate positive

relationship with job performance and organizational commitment.